Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Points aren't irrelevant either though, as they are generally a strong indication of performance, but they don't indicate progression.
IMO there are three steps that prospects generally take if they are progressing and going to be an NHLer.
1) Dominate against your own peers at your age group. Usually you have to produce points when playing against your own peers and age group to even get a sniff of the NHL. Usually role or ice time is not an issue because you will get that at 18 or 19 years old in the junior leagues.
2) Prove you can play and be effective in a professional league against grown men. (AHL, European league) Offensive production not always the best indicator because role, ice time, offensive opportunities can be very different for prospects in different leagues and on different teams.
3) Get some NHL game time to finish developing and show you can compete at the NHL level.
Where it gets tricky though is prospects aren't always given the opportunity to actually achieve each of those three things.
For example with somebody like Stromgren...he wasn't actually given the opportunity to do number 1 for a long period of time and was quickly graduated.
In his draft season he had 36 points in 44 games, which was good but not dominating. And then played 2 games in the J20 league in his draft+1 in which he had 4 goals and 6 points, and then never played in that league again and went right to the SHL.
So then he was struggling in the SHL to produce (and get consistent ice time), but was being compared to somebody like Stankoven who was being allowed to dominate against U-20 competition.
Then you could tell it took him some time to find his game and his confidence at the AHL level, because it was a bit fractured after struggling at the SHL level.
But after his confidence has improved and he was given a more offensive role with the Wranglers his production started to take off.
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Ice size was also probably a factor for Stromgren and other younger European's coming over. Axel Hurtig mentioned this in his development camp interview being something he has to figure out because everything happens a split second quicker with the smaller ice.
I thought Hurtig might be happier with smaller ice being a shutdown defender, but I guess it goes both ways that he also has less time to get rid of pucks or before attackers are on him in the corners.